


temperature is a spectrum

by Nobodyx



Category: Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure (Cartoon)
Genre: Also i have no goddamn clue how to spell Quirinian, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Freckle Siblings, I am the world, Quirinin?, Quirinon?, Technically Adira and Hector are in this, Varian probably got pretty depressed in jail so, but he literally just says Uncle and Aunt so i dont count it, but is anyone really okay ?, dun dun dun, hes okay in the end, of course, the world may never know, varian needs a hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:41:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27601573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nobodyx/pseuds/Nobodyx
Summary: Varian knows the heat very well, and has spent most of his life hot. He knows the cold very well, and has spent his worst times cold. He just wants to be warm.
Relationships: None
Comments: 2
Kudos: 28





	temperature is a spectrum

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written fanfiction in a while so sorry if this doesn't really flow. Let me know if there are any grammatical errors.

The heat was, if anything, familiar to Varian.

His first introduction came in the way of a distracted mother and fresh sweet rolls. Mom had been baking something so irresistibly sweet for his fourth birthday, and the smell brought Varian running to his mother’s side. He waited until Mom’s back was turned and climbed onto one of the big people chairs Mom and Dad sat in and reached his hand towards the sweet treat. Varian was a smart kid, his mom told him so many times, and he was very proud of the fact! But he hadn’t yet made the connection that the cloud rising off the delicious roll was not the smell, but the essence of fresh heat. His uncoordinated hand did not pluck the pastry from the pan in a clean, refined manner as he had intended, but his hand instead found its way onto the pan itself- and it burned. His palm throbbed, and hot tears spilled down his cheeks. His throat burned, too, without him realizing he even screamed.

In his second encounter with it, even Varian can admit he was being pretty stupid. Dad wasn’t crying, so why should he? The burning was in his chest and heated his body, despite the dreary weather and the suffocating atmosphere. He shouldn’t be crying. He shouldn’t be crying. Mom was fine, she was just...resting.  
….

While Varian would have normally believed that, he was a boy of science, and he couldn’t delude himself with her body right in front of him. He knew it was coming. Mom and Dad tried to hide it, but he could tell she was getting weaker. She stopped doing fieldwork, then stopped cooking, then stopped reading to Varian before bed, then stopped moving at all. The burning in his chest grew as she was forced to give up the activities she loved the most, and it felt like someone was blowing air into the balloon nestled inside of him, warming his body, ignoring how desperately he wanted the cold to consume him.

The balloon never really did pop, like Varian had expected it to. It lost some of its air, and Varian was able to breathe without breaking down into tears, but it was still there. It still ached for the mother he could barely remember. The heat was back, and it tickled at his foot, teasing him, daring him to push back at the heat that he knew really wasn’t much in the grand scheme of things. It was his fault, as always, as he had been careless with his alchemical materials. He pushed back (hot) tears that fought back with fervor, and lifted his foot up, and craned his neck down to see the damage for himself. He already knew what had happened and what he would need- tweezers, and some disinfectant- as his father had warned him about stepping on glass. His eyes met the wound and the ground swayed beneath him. His foot was marred with bright red and it suddenly erupted in an unbearable fiery rage, the invisible enemy grasping at him from below, pulling him down, down into the blazing pits of hell to burn his body to ash and feast upon whatever remains. His eyes rolled back into his head mere seconds after laying his eyes on the dreaded liquid trickling out of his wound.

He pours over any medical book he can get his hands on and diagnoses himself with hemophobia- the fear of blood. Why it was in the medical book in the first place he had no idea. Fear of blood is a completely normal fear to have, and passing out every time you see it in no way counts as irrational. It comes up again upon the princess- the princess!- visiting him for council having to do with her newly-grown hair. And, he may or may not have passed out in front of the princess and her friend for that same reason. And he definitely wasn’t embarrassed by it. It was a sunny day, and he wholeheartedly blamed the redness in his cheeks for that. It definitely wasn’t because Cassandra, the princess’s friend was in very close proximity to him and had just saved him from his inevitable end. Definitely not. And, well, if he found himself enjoying this heat for once, he didn’t think too much into it.

His fierce, loving determination kept him alive during the trip to the castle. Love for his father, and determination to do right by him for once in his life. His coat, gifted to him by his father, fondly wrapped its warm arms around him, comforting him against what he could not bear on his way back, though he barely noticed, beside himself with unneeded worry. His Dad would be- he is fine, in this current point of time, although the blizzard worsens and Varian’s not too sure he himself will make it through, the cold unwelcome, biting at his nose and ears with a vehemence he is sure is unique to the frosty white that coats the landscape. Surely the heat could not overtake his home in such a way.

Someone -the Princess, his mind supplies- is blowing into the balloon in his chest for the second time in his short fourteen years of age. It burns. He embraces the heat. He turns the stinging in his chest into a plan to help save his father and get back at those who wronged him. He keeps the agonizing warmth inside himself for the time being, as not to let those he needs to aid his plan know his true intentions. This manifests as fierce anger and a hand-destroyed lab. Hell laps at his heels, and he is determined to raise it.

He’s desperate- everything so far has failed, he’s failed. The Flower was a scam. Rapunzel’s hair didn’t work. The inside of his mech is hot. Much hotter than it should be. Sweat perspires his brow, yet his eyes focus on one thing and one thing only- Rapunzel. Why should she get her happy ending? She didn’t have to deal with the constant, almost unbearable pain engulfing her chest. She doesn’t have to deal with being discarded and betrayed by someone she thought a friend. She doesn’t have to deal with broken promises. The anger is unlike anything he has ever felt. The agony is welcomed. He has one, singular goal, and will stop at nothing to exact his righteous revenge. She deserves it anyway. 

Varian spends the majority of his life teetering between warm and hot. He falls into the cold.

Varian, for the first time in a good while, is truly cold. He can’t feel the heat of unbearable anger nipping at his heels. Doesn’t feel like the ground will open up and reign scorching embers upon the Earth. He’s just… cold. He doesn’t like it, he decides. Cold comes with guilt and shame. Cold comes with the damp cell he’s stuck in and cold comes with the suspicious cellmate he is with. He preferred thinking he was undoubtedly right in his actions, in kidnapping the queen, almost killing Rapunzel, almost crushing Cassandra, mutating his best friend. But anger is fickle, and cold is patient. It had been waiting for Varian since the first snowflake had fallen since warm shielded him from it. The frigid air is suffocating, and though his cellmate is cold, he speaks in warm, and to Varian, that is enough.

Varian fights to remain apathetic. Though the cold he has deemed his new ‘normal’ has seeped deep into his bones, he still fights to remain somewhere entirely off the cold and hot spectrum- completely unfeeling. He strives to not care that he is forcing hundreds into slavery, and focuses instead on the prospect of a chance at a new life- where nobody remembers his firey, angry misdeeds. So, when Rapunzel shows up again, he is surprised when he doesn’t have to push down the old anger, because he realizes it is long fizzled out, only but a few hot embers among scorched dirt. He feels… he doesn’t really know what he feels. It’s a feeling he can’t quite place. The wind on the airship is cold. The heated Quirinian is hot. Rapunzel is warm.

Varian, for once in his stupid tragedy of a life, is warm.

He isn’t battling with the unyielding depression of cold, and he isn’t flaming the fires of hot anger. Eugene is seated to the left of him and Rapunzel to his right, a cup of cocoa in his hands and a fire in front of him. Ruddiger is warm curled around his neck. The drink is warm clasped between his hands. His friends’ presences are warm. His father, talking in the other room, is warm. His Uncle and Aunt are warm. 

Varian is warm.

**Author's Note:**

> All comments are appreciated. If anyone has any pointers I am 100% looking.


End file.
